This is one of the journal entries I wrote for Love Hope Strength on the Everest Trek, original found here.

In’s:

Water.

Sterilized by SteriPEN. Hoping that the random droplets of water surrounding the mouth of the bottle that haven’t been sterilized aren’t going to give you diarrhea, especially along the trail where there aren’t many places of privacy.)

At some tea houses there are more particles floating in the water than you’d like, and quickly dump the ‘purified water’ into your Camelbak to avoid seeing what you don’t want to know about.  It did just get pulled from the stream after all. You know, that one with the yaks walking through it ( and we all know how hygienic a Himalayan Yak is)

Food.

  • The dining options have been as varied as the lichen along the trail, including:
  • Rice
  • Fried rice
  • Fried rice with cabbage and carrots.
  • Cabbage and carrots.
  • Potatoes (pealed by the same hands of the boy who just loaded the fire with Yak dung)
  • Potatoes with cabbage and carrots.
  • Fried noodles with cabbage and carrots.
  • Momo’s (with cabbage and carrots. And maybe potatoes)
  • Pizza! Yes, pizza. With Nak Cheese….and cabbage and carrots.
  • Butter vegetables – green beans and carrots.
  • Eggs
  • Fried eggs
  • Hard boiled eggs
  • Egg omelets with diced cabbage and carrots
  • Toast
  • Pancakes
  • Fried noodles from the night before.

 

Outs. If you are a sensitive one, skip to the end.

Mucus. Comes in different forms. Yak Lung (or Dung Lung, or Yak Hack) is a lovely thick mucus that doesn’t come out of your chest no matter how much you cough and can be heard in chorus in the morning during “washing water” time and throughout various times in the day.  Also, one may be fortunate to be lulled to sleep by a neighbor through paper-thin walls, listening to their wheeze and hack and/or snoring.

Peeing. If you are a guy, this is easier as you get to stand in a half-frozen squatter, donned with a 20-gallon barrel of ice water and completely-sanitary jug (or gallon-sized can) floating it in to flush down your pee (or other…..). The process involves cracking the frozen surface, dipping a plastic jug into the frozen water barrel and pouring it, with as much force as possible, into the squatter or toilet (if you’re lucky) to flush its contents.  If you need to squat to pee, you must first roll up your pant legs a good 8-10” so they don’t dip into the frozen pee/water/digestive particles that you really don’t want to recognize but you know it’s probably cabbage and carrots. And rice.

If you aren’t familiar with a “squatter” this is a 6”x18” hole in the floor with ridged places for your feet to grip (completely worthless when coated in frozen urine) that drains down to who knows where. As is in the name, you must squat to pee (like camping, only without a fresh breeze or nice scenic view.) Also, if you have to poo, you must squat, balance as to not fall into the previous users excrement’s, try not to touch any surrounding surfaces and hold your pant legs up at the same time. It is a feat even a Cirque de Soleil performer would find difficult . There’s not a lot of magazine reading going on here, people

For those who have been stricken with high altitude sickness, I can only imagine how much worse this experience is. Actually I can, as I had projectile vomiting in a restaurant squatter in Rishikesh, India after some bad fruit pancakes. But the small bucket rinsing sure comes in handy for cleaning of the room.. Just saying..

Levels of “clean”

Normally, clothes are either ‘clean’ or ‘dirty’. When trekking, there are various levels of clean that directly correlate with the number of days into the trek. When you begin, wearing a pair of socks for a day makes them ‘dirty’. A week in, you bravely smell your socks to see if they make you dizzy, or if you can get away with another day’s wear without risking knocking someone unconscious when taking off your boots. For shirts, I’ve resulted in “pit washing” – merely rinsing out the armpits of a shirt to eliminate (or dissipate) the smell as the short days and cold air don’t allow for a fast dry of anything.

Of course, when you are at a very high altitude and it’s freezing inside and out, you could really care less about how bad you smell, or changing into a different dirty shirt (because if you hadn’t worn it for a day, somehow it’s magically cleaner than the one you are currently wearing). You will wear those dirty pants into your precious sleeping bag and sport them the next day, not giving a $%* because you are WARM, and frankly, everyone else smells just as fresh as you do. And, let’s face it, nothing smells worse than the burning yak dung you have been hovering around for warmth. Up here, everything is relative. I never thought I would find myself hoping that more piles of Yak poo would be brought into the same room I was dining in.

Baby wipes. AKA cleaning your “pits and bits”

The uses for these are unlimited, and their price invaluable. Hand cleaning. Butt cleaning. Face washing. Body washing. (Oh, I forgot to mention there had been no running water for at least five days as the pipes all freeze. Hence the sanitary bucket of frozen water to flush. One jug for pee, three for poo.) You can use a few baby wipes on your pits to reduce the smell, and I discovered that I will only use so many as having another wipe for the next day is more valuable than being completely baby-wipe fresh

It’s a glamorous life being a trekker! we all made a decision to be here and regardless of the frozen squatters and dirty hands, it is worth it for the opportunity to make this trek for the memory and prayers of those who are deep within our hearts.

The In’s and Out’s of trekking have brought us closer together as a family and the humor that surrounds allows for a break in the deep emotions that we’ve all felt as we’ve read messages from home, as we’ve placed flags upon the rocks, watched our friends spread ashes of loved ones, and hugged as we’ve cried over those we’ve loved, and lost and haven’t even known.

Sarah Ewalt (with help from the Henn’s)
December 8, 2012
Pangboche
12,715 feet